Geraldo Rivera came very close to a violent confrontation with a Baltimore protester Tuesday night. But some deft work by the Maryland Senate Majority Leader defused it.
Rivera was live in Baltimore moments after the city’s newly-imposed, 10 PM curfew took effect. As he tried to talk to Sean Hannity, who was back in New York, a protester got in Rivera’s face, blocked the camera and a shouting match ensued. “We don’t need your false coverage!” somebody shouted. Another one repeatedly chastised Fox for “making money off of exploiting black pain.”
Fortunately, some calm intervention by Maryland Senate Majority Leader Catherine E. Pugh de-escalated what could easily have turned into a fistfight.
"It seems like they want trouble," Rivera said, probably hoping he'd get some hot Blacks Behaving Badly action.
No, Pugh told Rivera, people “don’t want trouble." She added, “We want our people to go home. But we also need the media to move back, because this is just inciting people.”
Pugh steered Rivera out of the crowd. Later, she said, “It’s a very emotional thing because people have been out here all day long. They’ve been demonstrating very peacefully.” She said that when people see camera lights, it incites them. “But these people have been out here all day long, just demonstrating very peacefully,” she continued. “And they’re demonstrating because they care about their neighborhoods, and they care about their communities.”
Very nicely done, Senator Pugh. Not surprisingly, nobody on Fox highlighted her good work.
Watch it below from the April 28 Hannity show.
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But it’s simply not true, as Marco tried to say, that he yelled at the kid before the kid did anything.
Geraldo started it just by being there.
It was stupid all the way around, but Geraldo certainly didn’t start it.
Saw Geraldo on F&F this morning talking about this and none of them gave Pugh any kudos. They didn’t even bother to play any of her interview.* They were more interested in showing the angry, young black man who was blocking Geraldo’s shot. F&F made sure to fill today’s show with video loops of angry black people who were rioting and looting. In fact, at times, they were even going back and re-airing riot footage from Monday.
The 3 stooges finally brought up the peaceful, positive things that were happening in Baltimore yesterday for just a scant amount of time – for 55 seconds – in the 3rd hour of their show. However, they did not bother to air any actual video footage of the good stuff (and their was plenty of it out there). They only showed 3 different images (photos? video stills?) of the good stuff which consisted of instances where African-Americans were being nice to the cops. Compare and contrast the 3 still images shown briefly in the last hour of the show to all the negative video loops that F&F chose to air today and there’s no doubt as to the message they wanted to reinforce with their viewers. We report, you decide? Um, not so much.
*during their segment with Geraldo, F&F did not play a single word from Sen. Pugh. But Elizabeth made sure to take a shot at her by saying, “And then Ms. Pugh seemed to insinuate there that it was the media causing the riots and violence.” Because F&F didn’t play any of the video of Pugh’s comments, the folks watching have no idea what she actually said and why. They were only told what she said from Elizabeth’s point of view. Pffft.
But Geraldo made a total fool of himself throughout his segments, and I fully expect to see some clips on Jon Stewart tomorrow night. What, he’s surprised to find people heckling him nose to nose when he decides to (or agrees to) do a live stand-up buried in the middle of a large crowd of angry and mouthy young men?
It was kind of entertaining switching among Fox, MSNBC and CNN. The main lead on the other two channels was how the curfew was having its effect, things were mostly calm, and the cops were continuing to be restrained in their behavior. On Fox, though, every twitch was milked for “black people behaving badly” narrative. The title for Hannity’s hour was something like “Showdown in Baltimore!” But to their obvious dismay, there was very little action.
I was also hugely amused when Rep. Elijah Cummings, who was out in the crowd urging people to get off the streets and go home, refused to do an interview with them.
